U Visas: Another Path to Citizenship Illegal Migrants Have Mired in Fraud and Abuse, Report Says

A report claims that the U Visa program has become just another path to citizenship that illegal migrants have mired in fraud and abuse.

The program, launched by Congress in the year 2000, was meant as an aid to law enforcement and was thought of as a unique way to solve crimes in the migrant community that would otherwise go unsolved, mostly due to a lack of cooperation among witnesses and victims in that community.

The program allowed illegals — both victims and witnesses — to work with police to solve crimes by coming forward with tips and information on serious crimes. After working with police, the program allowed illegals to gain legal standing based on their assistance to law enforcement. But instead of helping police solve crimes, the program has become a burden replete with massive fraud, frivolous applications, and misuse.

With its study, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) found that upwards of 416,000 petitions have been filed by migrants and most are simply granted the generous benefits in the program outright whether they actually helped police or not, despite that the program is supposed to only allow 10,000 applications annually

Police agencies across the country have been flooded with hundreds of thousands of often fake applications filled with false information about non-existent crimes. In some cases, these mountains of false applications have forced police to spend a plethora of man hours to investigate the claims in the applications to separate the proper applications from the fraudulent ones.

Early in 2024, Breitbart News reported that U Visas were being abused by migrants who had staged fake robberies on migrants so the migrants could file fake U Visa applications.

“This is a common practice — mainly among Indians — to qualify for a U Visa,” said Jay Palmer, cofounder of The Forced Labor Project and a former immigration adviser to President Donald Trump’s administration.

Indeed, the problem of faked crimes has been known for more than a decade, as Breitbart News reported as far back as 2014.

The program itself invites fraud by offering very generous benefits that allow applicants up to ten years free of facing immigration implications as well as allowing applicants legal work permits just for applying. These benefits are not just conferred on the applicant, either. They are extended to the applicant’s entire family. The lack of any real requirements to apply and the automatic benefits makes the program rife for abuse and a huge number of illegals have gamed the system to get legal status despite offering no real aid to police on any actual criminal cases.

The CIS report has tracked the massive increase in these applications and the hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants who won generous benefits from the government for abusing the system.

One problem appears to be that the program has allowed tens of thousands of illegals to gain legal status and work permits for themselves and their entire families without even a background check.

CIS adds that many of the applications are granted merely upon filing without even checking to see if the applicant actually participated with police on any investigation at all.

Further, records also show that some 35 percent of applicants who have been issued U Visa benefits have criminal records. And many applicants are completely ineligible for legal status under ordinary circumstances or are already under orders for removal.

In addition, many of the “crimes” applicants are claiming to inform police about were faked and staged specifically so that the applicants could file for a U Visa, filings which, in many cases, were automatically approved without any meaningful proof of facts.

Indeed, about 60 percent of the actual crimes the migrants were reporting on were well past the statutes of limitations and cannot be prosecuted in the first place. And many were never investigated by police, meaning the applicant had not assisted police at all.

Finally, law enforcement agencies across the country have testified that the U Visa program does not really help them solve any crimes and is useless to them.

The requirements for applicants also seem to have been ignored in many cases.

To qualify for a U Visa, migrants must have suffered substantial physical or mental abuse as a result of being a victim of a crime. The applicant must also have actionable information about criminal activity. The alien must give meaningful aid to solving crime and cooperate fully with police. And the crime must have occurred inside the U.S.A. or have violated U.S. laws.

CIS notes that the applications started out slow after the program went live in 2000. But by 2010, as migrants began learning of the program, applications began to soar. Between 2000 and 2009, only about 15,000 applications a year were filed. But by 2010 that number soared to more than 40,000 a year and 41,558 had been filed in 2024 alone, a six-fold increase over the early years.

The surge in applications has cost the government millions in clerical work as agents try to process them. CIS notes that “the surge in new applications means that the current stock of pending applications, which reached 250,000 in June 2025, would theoretically take 25 years to reach final adjudication and issuance if all were approvable.”

Worse, many blue states and jurisdictions — such as Illinois — have implemented local laws that demand that police departments rubber stamp the applications whether the applicants helped police on a case or not, making abuse of the program systemic.

CIS recommends that the program be eliminated, or at least heavily reformed with stricter rules to prove applicants are victims of crimes and are helping police before they are given protected status.

In the end, the study shows that, while it may have seemed like a good idea, the U Visa program is just one more avenue of fraud and abuse that allows illegal migrants – many of whom are criminals – to game the system, stealing from Americans, and covering for their own crimes with the help of Democrats.

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